El Taco Veloz 4 - Smyrna — Restaurant in Smyrna

The food was pretty good, and our experience here would have gone completely unlamented were it not for a very strange trap laid by the owner to ensnare diners and servers in conflict. On the table is your classic venerable plastic stand for advertising desserts and drinks and the like. Heading the ad is a line in bold reading "Text [whatever] to [bla bla] and receive 10% off your total order!"

The obvious reading of this is that if you sign up for their text messaging ads then they'll take 10% off your total order. My dad was taking us all out to dinner and, I think, rightly assumed that having texted the number, he'd get 10% off his total order.

When the bill came back and only one thing (and the cheapest thing at that) was discounted, our waitress explained impatiently (and it wasn't clear whether she was more frustrated with us particularly or the necessity of dealing with this stupid issue with probably every third table) that the owners explicitly require that every human who orders food needs to sign up for their taco texts in order to get 10% off their food. We argued that that would make sense if we were splitting the check, but the obvious reading of the ad is that if my dad had ordered this all for himself alone then the discount should apply to his entire order, and why should he pay for my unwillingness to have my phone spammed by taco texts?

At this point our waitress was definitely not on our side and told us, "The discount is in exchange for signing up for our ads. If you don't sign up for the ads, why would we give you a free discount?"

Besides the obvious, "Because that's not what your stupid ad says," or, "Because restaurants the world over have given far more than 10% discounts for far less in exchange than the promise of unsolicited texts about tacos," how about, "Because you confused your customers, and have within your power the very simple, uncomplicated, and inexpensive choice to either have them walk out of here with a satisfactory experience and the feeling of having been treated respectfully (and one whole chump for your spam mail to boot), or to treat them like they're greedy idiots for being confused and send them packing, unlikely to return, and liable to whine about it on social media (the very platform you hoped to exploit with your texts, and for which you have come up short one chump as a result of the disagreement)."

Though she could have been a lot more patient with us, I don't know how many other tables she's had to have this argument with or what else is going on in her life. I'm wholly on the side of the waitress despite her slightly rough handling of us because it was obvious that the owners had been VERY explicit with the waitstaff (if not their pamphlets) about their one 10% discount per phone spammed policy.

Regardless of whether our interpretation of the ad was correct, that policy sets up the waitstaff for failed interactions with their diners, which is inexcusable. Working in a restaurant is miserable enough as it is, and diners are guaranteed to supply their own endless supply of quibbles and complaints without you handing it to them and disempowering your...

Food is always good there...

4/13/2020 I love the food however I revisited in the eveningand my order was messed up I ordered a burrito instead of giving me beef they gave me pork so I called and I went back because the young lady never gave me my receipt but I still have my burrito once I got there the young lady she spoke very good English and wore glassesask me what was the problem and I started to tell her if she rudely shut the window on me I let that go then she comes back and says what kind of burrito did you want so I proceeded to tell her what I wanted what it was supposed to be then she proceeded to ask me for the burrito that they gave me once the burrito was given the young lady proceeded to critique me and tell me next time I need to have my receipt and handed me a small burrito I proceeded to tell the young lady that the other cashier never gave me my receipt I watched her throw it in the trashand she just kept talking rudely to me so I told her to shut the window and I left really messed up my mail I said to myself I'll never eat there again that's how mad I was but because the food is so good I went back this morning April 13th and got me a chorizo breakfast burrito which was deliciousthe owner really needs to touch bases with these young ladies to speak very good English and tell them it's not right to be disrespectful...

This was my first time eating here and it was just OK for me. I honestly would've preferred Taco Bell over this. I saw there was no one here and now I see why. I should've taken that as a sign.

So I pulled up to the drive thru window and the crew member assumed I was fluent in Spanish. We were able to work though that and then I ordered 3 tacos -- chicken, pork and steak. I spoke to the lady working the drive through and she acted as if I was just moving my mouth and uttering "hello" for fun! She didn't say hello or anything in any language. (This isn't good customer service hence "2 STARS".) Then I asked for taco sauce and was told it was in the bag. I was only given (2) sauces for (3) "dry" tacos.

After getting home and preparing to eat the tacos, I found it was just meat and a tortilla. The chicken taco was just dry and plain. The steak and pork tacos were seasoned well but still dry. There's no cheese, onions, special sauce, sour cream, lettuce or nothing--just plain ol' dry meat slapped onto a tortilla. Did I mention the meat was dry?! I didn't ask for anything to be added. I wanted to experience them the way "El Taco Veloz" intended them to be. So keep this in mind when/if ordering tacos. They did put a good amount of meat on the tacos I must say.

I may give some other items on the menu a try one day but I don't think it will be...